Sluice
by Steals Thyme
Summary: Things like this don't just rinse away. Dan/Rorschach, pre-Roche. Complete.


_(Written for the kinkmeme - anon wanted bathtime fic, but they got this instead. Sorry, anon ;d)_

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It is typical for scum to choose such a place for their seedy transactions; an abattoir near the docks that is rank with the stench of offal. Underhanded deals done among hanging carcasses, dangerous weaponry for dirty money, all permeated with the unmistakable tang of spilled blood.

Daniel is a liability, impeded by an injury sustained on patrol several days ago, but this is a big bust they have been working on for weeks now, and their window of opportunity to lock down the gun runners has narrowed to this one night. Rorschach suggested that he could manage alone, but the way Daniel's expression had subtly hardened, the stubborn set of his jaw, well – Rorschach knew a losing battle when he saw one, and he conceded defeat as gracefully as he could.

Things hadn't gone well.

Rorschach finds himself piloting Archie into the Owl's Nest, Daniel slumped silently in the co-pilot seat, clinging to the last fraying edges of consciousness. He looks ghoulish, his face streaked with reeking animal blood, it's oozed beneath his cowl and clotted his hair with gore. He breathes shallowly – that was the pig carcass, cold and rigid and swung on butcher's hooks, taken squarely in his already-bruised ribs and flooring him, leaving him gasping against sticky, coppery cement. It had been down to the wire after that, but Rorschach had clawed victory from the mobsters in a fury-fueled rampage.

Daniel passes out halfway up the stairs to his kitchen. Rorschach anticipates his collapse, telegraphed by the blanching of his face, suddenly ashen under dark smears, and catches him under his arms. He hauls him into his kitchen, spreadeagles him on the cool linoleum in order to strip off the costume – it is heavy and makes him hard to maneuver, without Daniel to animate it, the armor is about as flexible as a child's action figure.

Rorschach tugs off Daniel's boots and gloves and opens the front of his suit, crusted blood flaking away as he works at the zipper. He is bare-chested under the layer of Kevlar, ribcage an ugly map of yellow and purple. The blood has seeped through the seams, etching his pale body with lurid demarcations, caked into the creases of his skin. He looks like an autopsied cadaver.

That particularly unwelcome image dances macabrely at the back of Rorschach's brain and makes his guts clench unpleasantly, so he pats Daniel's cheek, perhaps a little harder than strictly necessary. Daniel mumbles thickly.

Rorschach rises to his feet to draw a tumbler of water, crouches to tip it unceremoniously over Daniel's face and shoulders, rust-brown rivulets curving over his body to pool on the floor beneath him. Unable to rein in his morbid imagination, Rorschach rubs his hand over the lines on his partner's skin, dissolving the gruesome jigsaw.

"Muh... 'schach?" His eyes open. Dark and bleary, but not glazed. Not clouded and unseeing.

Rorschach quietly releases the breath he had unconsciously restrained. "Need to get you upstairs, wash you off. Can you stand?"

"Hnh. Hurts to breathe, Jesus—" Daniel is hauled upright by solid arms, he clutches at Rorschach's shoulder. "What's that _smell_, is that you?"

He feels like he should be offended, but he can't help the quirk of his mouth under his mask. "No, Daniel. That's you. Come on."

They make it upstairs by increments, Daniel leaving grisly hand-prints on the banister and patterned wallpaper. The fluorescents in the guest bathroom don't help his pallid complexion, nor do the green walls, lending a sickly hue to his skin.

"I look like hell," he accuses the bathroom mirror, one hand braced on the wash basin, the other in his hair, clawing out clumps of dried blood. "And a dead pig? That's just embarrassing."

"Won't tell anyone." Rorschach's voice echoes; he's leaning into the shower cubicle to turn on the water. Flecks of spray catch the brim of his fedora and drip, beading on his trench coat. He strips off a glove to check the temperature.

From the corner of his eye, he sees Daniel sway. He's there in an instant, damp hand against his back, shoulder braced under his arm. The last thing he needs tonight is for Daniel to crack his head on the porcelain, add his own blood to the horror scene on his face. "Steady."

"Sorry," Daniel's voice sounds anemic, baritone stripped of its depth. "Dizzy. I—" He takes a deep breath, straightens. "Could you. Uh. While I shower. I mean, I don't want to risk—"

Rorschach catches Daniel's expression in the mirror – the furrow of his brow and slight wince to his mouth – and heat rises in his face as he comprehends what he's asking. He watches his reflection over Daniel's shoulder in mortification, the ink in his mask traitorously shifting and blossoming heavily across his cheeks. He tips his head forward and ducks away, hiding under the brim of his hat.

The_ last_ thing he needs.

He grunts, nods to himself. The other glove comes off, joins its partner in his pocket. The trench and jacket are folded atop the wicker hamper in the corner, and he toes off his shoes to reveal carefully darned socks. Daniel is watching him with undisguised fascination as he unbuttons his vest, and it bothers him enough that he turns around.

"Okay," he says, naked in his white shirt and pinstripes. He doesn't miss the fleeting disappointment on Daniel's face when he realizes that the last layer of armor stays.

His shirt is immediately plastered to him, and spotted with red droplets as Daniel sluices the blood off his chest. Daniel has left his underwear on – for which Rorschach is eminently grateful – though it doesn't do much to protect his modesty after a couple of minutes in the water. He studiously watches Daniel's face for signs of lightheadedness instead.

He grays out for a moment as he soaps his hair. A telltale weave to the left, and Rorschach is lowering him to sit in the shower tray, water beating down onto his mask and making scattered black noise that fades immediately, like fingermarks on flushed skin.

Daniel makes a frustrated little sound and tips his head back against the tile, discolored suds running down his neck and shoulders. Rorschach knows his exhaustion, is intimately familiar with that dragging mire and the heavy, useless fugue that accompanies it. He runs his fingers through Daniel's hair until the water swirling into the plughole runs clear, squeezing soapy residue from the thick locks.

He tucks his hand under the back of his mask, scratches at his own hair. Wiry, coarse. Not softened by cloyingly fragrant grooming products.

He cards both hands through Daniel's hair this time, over his forehead, slicking it back from his face. The water is _clear_. Daniel opens his eyes, and they're questioning, and it's past time Rorschach got out of this warm, wet, claustrophobic place.

There's still blood, though, resisting the patter of the shower, streaks crusted on his deltoids, along his clavicle and in the hollow of his throat. Rorschach's hands shake as he lathers the soap, shake as he rubs Daniel's skin, laving away the filth with slippery palms.

Shake with the vibration of Daniel's neck as he groans helplessly, and leans into his touch.

He can't tell where the noise of the shower ends and the roaring in his ears begins.

His clothes are sodden, clinging, constricting him.

The soap is lubricious and disgusting.

Daniel is sighing.

He's gone.

[#]

He stands in the guest room, dripping onto the carpet and sucking in deep breaths, reminding himself he's not in on patrol, shouldn't be wired and quivering as though in anticipation of an attack. His heart is jack-hammering, feels like it's going to crack his ribs, and the spiking adrenaline has left him hard and edgy. It's all he can do not to bolt downstairs, through the kitchen and Owl's Nest, to the safety of the dark maze beneath the city.

He leans, bracing himself straight-armed against the wall, head bowed, damp shirt cuffs darkening the wallpaper. There's soap on his hands still, and the smell of it's in his nose, clean and faintly scented. It catches in the back of his throat and makes him swallow and swallow. He can hear the shower through the wall, a tattoo on fiberglass, its rhythm changing as Daniel moves beneath it.

Daniel, vulnerable and bloody and making noises as if he, as if—

His pinstripes chafe, the wet fabric taut and abrasive over his skin. He palms his groin as if pushing against it will smooth away the tension there, erase the evidence from his guilty body. It's the wrong thing to do, and he whines with shame and frustration, cruelly digging his fingers into the offending flesh.

His name, barely audible under the echo of falling water.

Rorschach's fingers press into the wall as he works himself with vicious strokes – borne from necessity and designed for pain, not pleasure, never pleasure – drawing the moisture-roughened material over his erection without mercy. He opens his mouth wide in a gasp, pulls the fabric of his mask inward and grasps it between his teeth. When he slides his tongue over it, it's smooth and slick like wet skin. He chokes, shuddering against the knuckles pressed into his crotch while his heart tries to collapse in on itself.

He hears the water shut off, the squeak of bare feet in the shower tray. Labored breathing, distinct even through the closed door. Again, with a note of dismay, "Rorschach?"

He counts to ten, slowly, pulse calming with every breath, and opens the bathroom door.

Daniel is out of the shower and leaving heavily on the wash basin again. He's slung a towel over his shoulders, it hangs around him like a cape. "Where did you go?"

There's nothing accusatory about his tone, but there's also no sane answer to the question, so Rorschach remains silent. He rubs fisted hands down the sides of his pants, wishing for deep pockets. Daniel's picked up on his agitation – he would do, easily – and Rorschach can tell by the tension in his shoulders and the tilt of his chin that he's steeling for a confrontation.

"I'm sorry if I—" he begins, "I mean, it just. Felt good. It's been a long time since anybody..." he trails off under Rorschach's inscrutable gaze and decides to address the mirror instead. "I spend all my nights fighting, and half my days sleeping, I don't have time for anything else. Anybody else."

"I'm not homosexual, Daniel." Rorschach states, too hastily even to his own ears.

"I know, buddy." When he looks up, Daniel's smile is beatific. "Hey. Let's get you out of those wet clothes."

[#]

They're in Daniel's bedroom, bedside lamp describing a soft sphere that pools deep shadows into the corners and into the hollows of their bodies. He's been in here before, of course, knows every owl-themed tchotchke on the bookcase. Knows which floorboards creak, and just how the light from the streetlamp outside spills over the pillows. Daniel is sitting at the foot of his bed, watching as Rorschach's fingers fumble at the front of his shirt.

"Not used to this," Rorschach says, and he barely recognizes his own voice. Daniel reaches out to pull him a step closer, personal space shrugged away, and unfastens the buttons with clever fingers that are used to dismantling complex things, and putting them back together again with surety.

"I know." Warm hands slip beneath the shirt, peeling it away from his clammy skin, reach up to slide across his shoulders and flay the damp cloth from his arms. "I'm sorry."

He touches, feather-light down Rorschach's abdomen, fingers tracing the hewn geometry of the muscle there.

"Don't," Rorschach mutters, grasping Daniel's wrists as he unfastens the button of his pinstripes. It's getting hot in the room, Daniel's breath is too vital against his stomach, and he hates how much he's giving away. "Not used to this, Daniel."

"It's okay," Daniel says, and the blatant untruth of the statement is staggering. Rorschach stares down the bare-faced denial with a steadily tightening grip, but all he can feel is Daniel's pulse racing under his fingertips, and all he can see in his face is unbearable compassion, illuminated by a bright desire that is far too tempting.

Seconds pass, marked by the steady pounding of his blood, his wrenching breaths, the gentle tick of Daniel's alarm clock.

"Can't do this," he says finally, stroking thumbs firmly over Daniel's wrists as he releases them. He turns to stare at the bookcase while he brings himself under control, ceramic owls and aeronautical journals and wooden bookends. Breathe in, breathe out.

He hears Daniel exhale shakily, the muted thump as he sprawls back onto the bed. "It's alright," he says to the ceiling. He sounds profoundly tired.

[#]

He's not sure how long he stands there – long enough for Daniel's breathing to become deep and slow as he succumbs to sleep, and for pale dawn light to seep under the drapes.

The mattress dips under his weight as he sits. This night has gotten away from him in ways that are far more destructive than a flashing knife-blade or a mistimed dodge, and he can hardly believe the way he had bared himself so readily, how he had—

It must be what inebriation feels like, an insidious, pernicious thing diffusing through his veins and obfuscating his judgment. His hand rests on the contour of Daniel's shoulder. It's warm.

So is his neck, under Rorschach's fingertips. His pulse thrums slowly, steadily.

He peels up the mask. Under his lips, Daniel's pulse quickens.

Fingers touch the curve of his cheek, draw him closer.

He finds a pliant, soft mouth under his own.

Daniel is sighing.

He stays.


End file.
